A Day in Life
The mood swings have lost their camber. The days blend into weeks and the life of quiet desperation becomes tolerable. After 25 years in the same occupation, having medicated to expose unbiased causes, I’m left to aging and perhaps ennui with routine.
My day starts with the alarm clock. It’s 6:30am and my first conscious thought is, “Already?” My bones and muscles ache as if I spent the prior day chopping wood. I doze for a few more minutes hoping to awaken with more hope and restfulness. It never happens.
It takes all my will-power to exit the bed, knowing that I have a solid eight hours of undesirable work ahead of me, but somehow I make it from the bed to the shower. The brain is still in the ‘off’ position, preferably. It’s not unusually cold in the house but the hot water from the shower provides a tiny bit of comfort. Like a minor extension on the unconscious lease of slumber under insulating bedding I let the water massage the top of my head.
The tacit checklist of my morning routine:
- messenger bag, locked and loaded
- cell phone, charged
- two breakfast bars, top pocket
- morning joe, travel mug
- red lunch box, armed
- 1 Adderall XR, consumed
- car keys, in hand and out the door
The old Land Cruiser provides yet more familiarity. It smells like the year it was built. 1987. I muscle my way onto the freeway and find the middle lane where I’ll track with traffic for the next 30 to 90 minutes depending on how many accidents there are between far North Phoenix and East Tempe. As soon as I integrate with the momentum of fellow commuters I unwrap and eat breakfast. NPR provides slow stories, along with expected traffic (mostly incorrect reports of accidents long since cleared.)
As I drive, I am unconsious. I care little for speed knowing that I’ll be at my desk of despair soon enough. I feel every joint and flaw in the asphalt beneath my all-terrain tires aired to 50psi to get better gas mileage. It’s a hypnotic journey and light massage at the same time. I enjoy driving and my commute provides a venue for morning prayer or meditation. Pray without ceasing. An exercise in patience.
Pulling into the parking lot is disappointing. The drive is complete for 9 hours when I’ll retrace my journey. Nine hours of doing activities that are against my will. I trade those hours for food, shelter, gas for my 23 year-old Land Cruiser, and the many maintenance costs associated with the supporting of a family. Some people are energized by their jobs and I envy those people.
My desk isn’t very personalized. In fact, when I’m not there you might consider my work area abandoned. Inside my messenger bag I keep my Mac, a folder of current projects, working spectacles, a pen, along with a few creature comforts to assist throughout the day. I extract each component to my work area and run triage on the days’ pressing project(s). I check email and task manager for any items needing immediate attention.
By now the Adderall has kicked in and I’m enjoying some focus. It really wouldn’t matter what the task is, I would be able to do it. But I also know that I have a finite amount of fuel for the day. With proper cadence I will be productive most of the day, but under a deluge of multiple, high-prority tasks requiring my immediate attention, I can be spent by noon.
Most of the time morning goes quickly. By lunch at around 12 to 12:30 I’m feeling first fatigue of the day, but I know that lunch will provide the fuel I need to endure the afternoon. Hopefully. I unpack my lunchbox at my desk and check my news haunts on the web, reading while munching, headlines of interest.
Even on the best days, post lunch is in some ways like getting out of bed. It takes a lot of discipline, or perhaps defiance of will to re-engage the work.
Across the pond it’s called Tea Time. For me it’s apple-O’Clock. I take a break from the dark cave of the office to eat my apple or orange on the deck outside of the building. It faces a residential area where I watch the politics of a wild colony of Love Birds. I am jealous of all those creatures who are able to live according to their nature. I think about what it is I would do if I had the luxury of doing anything. Nothing comes to mind so I finish my fruit and return to the business.
5 O’clock comes slow. The last hour or two are painful. I struggle to find the energy to continue work and feel guilty for not being able to concentrate like I can in the morning. Quitting time for the day finally arrives. I’ve put in a full day, with varying degrees of productivity. Some days better than others, but rarely a feeling of contented accomplishment. I write software that provides productivity to clients, but I never see the results, and the client is rarely satisfied. Software is intangible and seems to decay and be abandoned over time. Unlike an old piece of machinery that still takes up space and can be appreciated even as it rusts and decays, software is simply deleted leaving no evidence that it ever existed.
Writing software is a very hollow task that requires no less thought than any other engineering feat. Some programmers find intrinsic reward, but I can’t say I ever had. I’ve always been in it for the money. Probably not the reason to do anything.
Sometimes the commute home is slow, and sometimes seems to take forever. Traffic varies, but I’m always satisfied to be on the road again and letting the brain close down for the day. NPR can be annoying during this time of day so sometimes I’ll slap a CD into the player. Sometimes it’s the wrong selection though and I get irritated.
After dinner I take my medication/vitamin pile and decide what to do with my discretionary hour of the day. Sometimes I have a few head-cycles left but am cautious not to over-extend myself. Knowing that I have another day that I’ll need to endure I force myself to rest. I torture myself with thoughts that I need to do my job better and consider studying technical books but ultimately conclude that down time is better.
By 9:30 I am feeling sleepy and by 10 I’m in bed and fading rapidly. The thoughts of another day exhaust me and make it easy to doze off into the escape of unconsciousness.
In: Depression · Tagged with: bi-polar, Depression, employment, job, routine, unable to concentrate